Have questions about our Library or Basque culture?
Here are some of the more common questions that we receive about the Library or Basque culture and history.
Basque Library FAQs
The Center for Basque Studies addresses these questions on their website.
Go to the Library Search discovery tool. Key your search into the box. You can search for titles, authors, keywords, and Library of Congress subjects.
Upon request, library staff will check reference sources to confirm the Basque identity of a surname. Some of the sources we consult are Diccionario Onomástico y Heráldico by Jaime de Querexeta (Bilbao : Editorial La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca, 1970-1983), and Blasones y linajes de Euskalerria by Endika de Mograbejo (Bilbao : Editorial Amigos del Libro Vasco, 1991). We do not have the staffing to trace family genealogy.
In many instances, we can loan you materials through an interlibrary loan program. Take the citation that interests you to a university or public library interlibrary loan department in your area and ask them to initiate the request for you. After the request is made, allow several weeks for the requested material to arrive.
The article, Calculating Ethnicity Through the U.S. Census: The Basque Case by William A Douglass, BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 1, gives a useful summary of data on Basque Americans from the 1980-2010 census.
Our library has a number of interesting books on the lonely life of the Basque sheepherder in the Western United States. Find them using the Library Search discovery tool.
Books on Basque language, literature, history, anthropology, politics and more are published and distributed by the University of Nevada Press. You can also buy in the Elkar bookshop.
We are often able to answer map questions using print maps in our collection. Reasonably priced folding maps of the Basque Country can be found at Basque Imports.